Fort Lauderdale warehouse blaze damages luxury car collection

(Sun Sentinel/Ihosvani…)

August 27, 2012|Ihosvani Rodriguez, Sun Sentinel

FORT LAUDERDALE — High-end and rare cars were among some of the items damaged during a warehouse inferno that kept firefighters busy for several hours under tropical storm-related weather, officials said.

The collection belongs to a Fort Lauderdale man who made millions on the Internet during the dot com boom.

On Monday, fire officials were still cleaning up the damage caused by the blaze that broke out about 11 p.m. Sunday as the bands of rain from Tropical Storm Isaac lashed the area.

The cause of the fire has not been determined, and nobody was hurt.

The hulking warehouse, which contains no business signage and is located at 1400 N.W. 62nd Street, is owned by a firm called Cypress Creek Florida LLC, according to property records.

The firm is registered to Tom Gonzales, who splits his time between Nevada and Fort Lauderdale. An employee at his office in Nevada said Gonzales was in Fort Lauderdale attending to the incident. He could not be reached for comment on Monday.

The warehouse was used for personal storage by the owner and it contained vehicles, jet skis and other personal items, said city of Fort Lauderdale spokesman Matt Little.

An inventory was not immediately available, but Little said the vehicles sustained all types of damages ranging from minor to severe.

Fire officials said the battle against the blaze was hampered by the area's severe weather. The heavy winds kept fanning and rekindling the flames. The building itself sustain a partial roof collapse and nearby lightning forced rescue workers to temporarily come down from their ladders, Fort Lauderdale Fire Deputy Chief William Findlan told several TV stationsfrom the scene.

"Once the roof opened up, and once the large bay doors opened up on the east end and exposed the whole warehouse to the wind, the fire became a blow torch," Findlan said.

In addition to storing personal luxury items, the warehouse was often used by SWAT members with the Broward Sheriff's Office.

"The owner graciously lent us the building on occasions for warehouse-type operations drills," said agency spokesman Jim Leljedal.

There were no department property in the warehouse, Leljedal said.

A CNN.com article published in May indicated that Gonzales once had built a 12,000-square foot subterranean parking garage in Lake Tahoe to store some of the most valuable cars in his 400-car collection.

Gonzales and his late son, Thomas Gonzales Jr., founded the e-commerce pioneering firm called Commerce One in 1994. He now owns Fort Lauderdale-based TG Investments.